The accounts of the two commanders make it somewhat difficult to understand what happened during the battle. Before you start the exercises below, take a minute to become familiar with the area. The lines curving across the battlefield are contour lines; they are a way to represent changes in elevation on a two-dimensional surface like a map. Each line marks a change of 50 feet; the numbers refer to the distance above sea level.

Questions for Illustration 2

1.
Virtually all the fighting in the Battle of Honey Springs took place in the area shown by this map. How large, in square miles, is this area?

2. Where is the highest point on the map? What is its approximate elevation?

3. The Texas Road was not a paved route, but a wide path worn into the plains. Why was the route it followed a good one for cattle and wagons?

4. Use Reading 3 to help you mark the course of the battle. On Illustration 2, write AUSA and ACSA to identify the approximate position of each side's troops as they readied for battle. (Locate the Confederate troops, then determine which ridge to the North the Union could have rested behind. Remember that both commanders were estimating, not measuring, distances.)

5. Mark on the map two of the spots where significant fighting occurred. Do not include the skirmishing mentioned at the beginning of Cooper's account. Identify the earlier one "A1," the latter "A2."

6. Mark the place where fighting ended "AE," where the Union troops stopped their pursuit of the Confederates. Look in Blunt's account of the battle to find this description.

* The illustration on this screen has a resolution of 72 dots per inch
(dpi), and therefore will print poorly. You can obtain a high quality
version of Illustration 2, but be aware
that the file will take as much as 20 seconds to load with a 28.8K
modem.